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The pre-game topic with manager John Gibbons surrounded Josh Johnson and why he wasn’t more successful.

The same questions should have been asked about Emilio Bonifacio.

In Wednesday’s game against the Detroit Tigers, a bad error by Bonifacio opened the door for Detroit in the second inning and Johnson couldn’t close it.

The result was a sloppy 6-2 loss, their second in a row, which dropped the Jays two games under .500 at 41-43.

“You never know how the game turns out. We turn the double play — it’s a tailor-made double play — you really never know how things shape up, and then it kind of unravelled on us like that,” Gibbons said of Bonifacio’s error that led to four unearned runs in the second inning. “We definitely didn’t help ourselves there. Against the better pitchers, you fall behind like that, it’s an uphill battle.”

Bonifacio, part of the package that arrived in the big off-season trade with the Miami Marlins, was advertised as a super utility player, one who could play both the infield (specifically second base) and the outfield.

He was a speed merchant who could hit for average — in 2011 in 152 games with the Marlins he hit .296 with 40 stolen bases — and terrorize teams on the bases.

That particular player has yet to show up with the Jays.

For whatever reason, Bonifacio has yet to get untracked, yet to settle down in his new surroundings.

Like the majority of the newcomers, Bonifacio pressed at the start of the season, had his playing time reduced and since has misfired at every opportunity.

Not only is he not hitting — .207 (44-for-213) overall and in a 13-for-70 (.186) rut in his last 26 games — but he has become a defensive liability as well.

In the second inning, Prince Fielder led off the inning with an infield single off the glove of Johnson.

DH Victor Martinez followed with a grounder hit right at Bonifacio that was a tailor-made double play. The problem was that Bonifacio never laid a glove on it as the ball bounced right through his legs leaving runners at the corners. It was his seventh error of the season, one off the team lead held by Maicer Izturis.

Johnson, who is having his own problems this season, couldn’t pick up his teammate. If Bonifacio makes the play, though, who knows what follows.

Gibbons, though, defended his second baseman.

“Defensively, he’s actually been pretty good,” he said with a straight face. “He’s actually been pretty steady out there, I think, other than you take away those first few weeks. Offensively, he really hasn’t got untracked consistently. He’ll throw in his hits here and there. As far as getting on a little roll, that hasn’t happened yet.”

A Jhonny Peralta single scored Detroit’s first run and two outs later on a 3-2 pitch, No. 9 hitter Alex Avila (batting .175) stroked a three-run home run to left centre.

With unbeaten Max Scherzer on the hill for the Tigers that was all she wrote. Scherzer lasted 61/3 innings and allowed two runs on seven hits to move to 13-0 in 17 starts.

All of the runs in the second inning against Johnson were unearned.

The third inning featured more fielding farce, but this time the culprit was Johnson as he dropped two balls hit back to him — both of them errors.

The Tigers would only score one run in the third thanks to a miraculous backhand running catch by Jose Bautista on a ball hit in the gap with two out and the bases loaded.

Johnson, making his 10th start for the Jays — he was out from April 21 to June 9 with a right triceps inflammation — dropped to 1-3. He lasted five innings in which time he allowed six runs — five of them unearned — on seven hits, two of them home runs.

“I’ve got to pick up my teammate,” Johnson said of the second inning meltdown after the error. “Things like that are going to happen. I’ve got to make better pitches and get outs and get outs quicker.”

This was not the production the Jays envisioned when they acquired Johnson or Bonifacio for that matter.

Given the quality of his stuff and how sharp he looked this spring in Dunedin, his record is baffling.

One of the issues facing Johnson this season is the Jays do not score runs for him. In five of his starts he has held the opposition to three runs or less and has zero wins in those starts.

His lone win came in a 13-5 rout of Baltimore June 23.

“You saw him in spring training, he was just boom, boom, boom,” Gibbons said of his big right-hander.